Throughout my recovery journey, I’ve run into a number of traps that have led me back to porn. I wanted to share a few of them and how I’ve dealt with them.
- This isn’t porn.
- If you find yourself justifying why you’re looking at something, chances are it is porn or at the very least, interfering with your recovery enough to make you think twice.
- The solution here is to calmly walk away from whatever it is you’re looking at, and do something else. By doing this, you’re doing two things: you’re being honest and accountable for yourself about what you’re using in the moment, and you’re also walking away from a potential relapse.
- The more you can be honest about how certain media affects you, the better you can be about managing relapses before they happen
- My recovery only counts if I reach 90 days.
- Your recovery counts whether it’s 1 day or 1 minute. The underlying trap here is that your life doesn’t begin until you reach your magic number, be it 90 days or 7 days or whatever you pick.
- The solution here is to recognize that you don’t have to wait to be the person you envision you’ll be at 90 days. Who is the pornfree you? Are you honest? Are you strong? What does that person do? What is that person like? Take a moment to ponder this, and realize you can be this person right now, if you chose to.
- Porn is my sexuality.
- This is a baldface lie. No matter how hard you try, you cannot turn wine into water. Wine is wine. In a similar vein, what you view is exactly that–junk that you don’t need that is unrelated to your sexuality, but rather strongly related to a primal novelty-seeking impulse.
- The solution here is to recognize that you have a sexuality that is independent of porn. Embrace your sexuality, whatever that is or isn’t. Sex and sexuality are so much more meaningful and beautiful in reality than in porn, where it is always rushed, frantic, forced.
- Some people may disagree with me for good reasons, but I believe exploring your body and being OK with being sexual is a key step towards dissociating porn with your sense of sexuality. Being a confidently sexual being without porn was one of the most empowering things I pursued in my journey. In this vein, I do not restrict masturbation at all.
- It’s just this one time, I swear!
- Many addicts know this one. If you find yourself searching for porn or taking peeks at things you consider porn (or are questioning if it’s porn, see #1), then chances are you are actively lapsing. A lapse is different from a relapse in the sense that it’s a one time slip that doesn’t lead back to systematic abuse of porn.
- The solution here is to stop immediately and do something else. Whenever you find yourself telling yourself it’s just one time or the last time, it never is. I’ve recorded how many times I said that to myself in 2020, and it is many more times than I want to admit. The last time you used porn was the time you X’d out of it, not the active attempt you’re making to use it again now.
- This is the time to be pulling out all your acute urge tools. Urge surfing, leaving the room, phoning a friend, going outside (if safe), doing a minute of exercise, taking a 5 minute break to breathe — there are so many tools to deal with acute urges, but they all start with being accountable for where you are, accepting it without judgment and with full forgiveness, and moving away from the problem.
- I already peeked, so I might as well go all the way.
- This is the voice of escalating a lapse into a relapse. You do not ever need to commit to a relapse just because you lapsed. This is the voice of capitulation to your addiction.
- The solution here is to recognize that you are at the beginning of a physical relapse. You have a choice in the moment, and nothing is forced upon you. It may be difficult, but it is simple to solve: stop now, and prioritize your recovery. All recovery journeys are imperfect, and it is impossible to expect that you’ll never encounter porn again. Rather, it is more important to be resilient when porn appears in your life again.
- What would you rather have, 365 days pornfree where you peeked and stopped immediately and thus preventing all relapses on the way to a year pornfree, or a 7 day streak where you managed to dodge all porn?
- My streak only counts if I never see porn ever.
- It’s up to you how you define your success, but I have found that you know intuitively whether you messed up or not. It’s about being honest and accepting the results, whether you like them or not. That said, I think it’s foolish to believe that you’ll never see porn again.
- The solution here is to be honest and to setup reasonable expectations about your recovery and what you define as success. For me, that looks like this: if I find myself systematically peeking using, I am relapsing. If I peek but stop myself immediately use all my recovery tools to keep myself accountable, that is fine as long as it really is a one-off peek. It is more important to be resilient than it is to be perfect.
- That said, do not lie to yourself and count the days even when you use porn. Using porn is what it is, and you will know. Again, it’s about honesty at the end of the day.
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